callforpapers

Call for Papers

The work of Coseriu (1921-2002) is quite unknown to the French public – particularly for linguistic reasons, for most of his writings were published in German and Spanish. The recent opening of the archives of E. Coseriu, the re-edition of significant texts and new French translations is challenging us to (re)evaluate one of the major enterprise of the second-half of the XXth century European linguistics. By soliciting researchers who have worked with Coseriu or followed his theorical attempts, the aim of this symposium is to reconsider the linguist’s contributions and to show how his propositions are echoed and pursued nowadays. Although linguistic typology and grammar theory remain possible topics, priority will be given to submissions which focus on language philosophy, text linguistics or lexical semantics.

1. The papers could particularly bring into question a semantic theory developed in the 60’s : as a linguistic synthesis of the saussurian differential episteme, of the interwar years’ propositions on the conceptual fields (L. Weisberger, J. Trier) and of the onomasiological and semasiologial perspectives, lexematics kept evolving, extending from the system to the norms and thus progressing to a semantics of speech. The papers may deal with,

• the relationships between lexematics and the other models in structural semantics ;

• the relationships between lexematics and cognitive semantics (with comparative studies of models on the same object for example) ;

• a likely resume of the fundamentals of lexematics in the prospect of a semantics of texts (or of speech) ;

• models linking lexematics with the energetic conception that underlies in the coserian linguistics.

2. Whereas the object ‘text’ has a special place within the language sciences, linguistics of text — as defined by Coseriu (1955) — will immediately be conceived as a necessary part (because it is integrative) of a linguistics of the activity of speech. It improves also on the individual level a linguistics of historical languages that determines in its turn a linguistics of speech in general. But if this originality deserves to be reconsidered, it is mainly because the two text linguistics acknowledged by Coseriu – a linguistics of meaning, considered as a priority, and a transphrasal grammar, which widens the traditional analysis to the textual level – have developed separately, which benefited to the second one. The reflection could in this regard try to enlighten :

• the position of discourse linguistics nowadays in such an epistemological frame ;

• the effects of the coserian linguistics of meaning in the current works of a textual semantics ;

• the way meaning and interpretation are, in the linguistic description, questioned by the above described conception of text linguistics ;

• the relationships between this text linguistics and stylistics, philological hermeneutics or translation studies.

3. Coseriu's work on the philosophy of language denies at once any compartment between science and philosophy. The known reference to Humboldt appears in his work equally symptomatic of a reflection that associates philosophical questioning and posing of linguistic problems. In that way, even though the historiographical undertaking of Coseriu is in itself a legitimate study, the papers would particularly problematize what the referred fields – in their principles themselves – and coserian theories in general owe to philosophy of language.

Persons wishing to present papers are invited to submit an abstract
(maximum length : 2000 signs – title and bibliography included) to the
following address : cosaix2007@gmail.com . Answers will be given before 15 may 2007.